{"id":5195,"date":"2024-03-15T13:51:05","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T17:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2024-03-15T13:51:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T17:51:07","slug":"where-are-they-now-ronnie-laughlin-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2024\/where-are-they-now-ronnie-laughlin-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are They Now? Ronnie Laughlin \u201980"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Milestones along the journey Ronnie Laughlin \u201980 took from rural North Carolina to NC State and, now, Saudi Arabia are often punctuated by one word, \u201cOK,\u201d and, as she calls it, a lot of intestinal fortitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOK\u201d was her answer when her high school coach, Debbie Yow, the future Wolfpack athletics director, suggested she play for Peace College after graduation, a possibility she\u2019d never considered. A year later, she said, \u201cOK,\u201d when Peace coach Nora Lynn Finch transferred to NC State to coach with Kay Yow (Debbie\u2019s sister) and offered to take Laughlin with her. The Wolfpack women quickly rose in the ranks, winning the ACC\u2019s regular-season championship in 1978 and both the regular season and tournament championships in 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Years later, that same outlook launched her to Saudi Arabia as she built a career as a speech pathologist. When a friend asked if she wanted to train Middle Eastern students to become speech pathologists, she said, \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just always had the attitude\u2009. . .\u2009to just step out of your comfort zone,\u201d Laughlin says. \u201cAnd moving to Saudi Arabia was way out of my comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a year-long stint in the late 1990s, Laughlin returned to Saudi Arabia in 2010 and stayed. Her clients are primarily Saudi Arabian children having trouble with articulation or putting sentences together as they learn English. Early on, there was some culture shock, and she\u2019s still learning Arabic. But Laughlin has found friendships in the large expat community and traveled across the Middle East and Africa. Most Fridays, you\u2019ll find her playing golf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she\u2019s still saying \u201cOK,\u201d amid challenges, including her breast cancer diagnosis in 2020. Laughlin drove herself to treatment and continued working, despite severe cancer-related fatigue. She pushed through, researching a treatment for the fatigue and convincing her doctor to prescribe it. Now healthy, she is sharing her experience in a book, An Atypical Journey<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of this is a plan, not in my head,\u201d Laughlin says of her life trajectory. \u201cThe man upstairs had a plan, but he didn\u2019t peep me on it. He just said, \u2018Trust me,\u2019 so I did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n

By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Milestones along the journey Ronnie Laughlin \u201980 took from rural North Carolina to NC State and, now, Saudi Arabia are often punctuated by one word, \u201cOK,\u201d and, as she calls it, a lot of intestinal fortitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOK\u201d was her answer when her high school coach, Debbie Yow, the future Wolfpack athletics director, suggested she play for Peace College after graduation, a possibility she\u2019d never considered. A year later, she said, \u201cOK,\u201d when Peace coach Nora Lynn Finch transferred to NC State to coach with Kay Yow (Debbie\u2019s sister) and offered to take Laughlin with her. The Wolfpack women quickly rose in the ranks, winning the ACC\u2019s regular-season championship in 1978 and both the regular season and tournament championships in 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Years later, that same outlook launched her to Saudi Arabia as she built a career as a speech pathologist. When a friend asked if she wanted to train Middle Eastern students to become speech pathologists, she said, \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just always had the attitude\u2009. . .\u2009to just step out of your comfort zone,\u201d Laughlin says. \u201cAnd moving to Saudi Arabia was way out of my comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a year-long stint in the late 1990s, Laughlin returned to Saudi Arabia in 2010 and stayed. Her clients are primarily Saudi Arabian children having trouble with articulation or putting sentences together as they learn English. Early on, there was some culture shock, and she\u2019s still learning Arabic. But Laughlin has found friendships in the large expat community and traveled across the Middle East and Africa. Most Fridays, you\u2019ll find her playing golf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she\u2019s still saying \u201cOK,\u201d amid challenges, including her breast cancer diagnosis in 2020. Laughlin drove herself to treatment and continued working, despite severe cancer-related fatigue. She pushed through, researching a treatment for the fatigue and convincing her doctor to prescribe it. Now healthy, she is sharing her experience in a book, An Atypical Journey<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of this is a plan, not in my head,\u201d Laughlin says of her life trajectory. \u201cThe man upstairs had a plan, but he didn\u2019t peep me on it. He just said, \u2018Trust me,\u2019 so I did.\u201d<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Then: Women\u2019s basketball team forward\/center
\nNow: Speech-language pathologist in Saudi Arabia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-immersive.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-immersive-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"backgroundColor\":\"reynolds_400\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Then: Women\u2019s basketball team forward\/center
Now: Speech-language pathologist in Saudi Arabia\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[1316,126,328,645,1315,1314,1313,1325],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-bets","category-stories","tag-an-atypical-journey","tag-basketball","tag-debbie-yow","tag-kay-yow","tag-nora-lynn-finch","tag-peace-college","tag-ronnie-laughlin","tag-saudi-arabia"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":52,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5239,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions\/5239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}